Grandson 2003
- Monday – Fly to Moscow on the early flight, pick up a 3 hour time difference, have meeting, eat a meal, sleep.
- Tuesday – 4 meetings around Moscow, 2 hours in a cab, nearly miss the late flight back to London, eventually arrive at 10:30pm (1:30am Moscow), so home by 11:30.
- Wednesday – Get up at 4:30 to get a cab to Heathrow to fly to Paris on the 6:20 flight. All day meeting, go out to see the football, in at past midnight.
- Thursday – 8am start, all day meeting, organise a meal for 30 people, sit in hotel bar until 4:30am.
- Friday – 8am start, more meetings, leave at 2pm, miss train to Lausanne by 2 minutes. Spend 2 hours at Gare du Lyon, 4 hours on the train, miss connection at Lausanne by 2 minutes. Spend 45 minutes at Lausanne, arrive at Yverdon, go to the bar in Grandson, drink until midnight. Go back to Yverdon, go to another bar with the UK & Australian teams, drink more. Go to another bar, be incredibly poor at table football, drink more. JD McNeil has his face forcefully (by clearly not unwillingly) stuffed between a pair of tattooed (ahem) "more mature" breasts on the way out of the bar. Get into the room at about 2:30am.
-
Saturday--
Up at 7:15 for breakfast. Elapsed sleep so
far this week: 27.5 hours in 5 days.
Note – Throughout this report as an experimental measure to try and bring wargaming in line with more mainstream, televised sports I will be introducing expert commentary and analysis from members of a mythical expert panel of internationally famous wargamers who will pretend that they were present during the weekend. Any resemblance these commentators may have to actual persons (or wargamers) alive, dead, present at this competition or even staying in our hotel and traveling on our bus is entirely non intentional and will be denied vehemently on all occasions.
Game 1 – vs Portugal
My Khmer army was ready and snorting, with more elephants than you could shake a stick at. Despite coming in for criticism and puzzlement from Mr J Morgan I was confident that the army choice would be a good one, as surely everyone would have lots of knights? Also, unusually for me this year I had even used the army before (about 3 years ago, at different points values), which was a nice bonus. Just to make life more interesting I had managed to fit in no practice games, and had never actually deployed this composition of the army on table.
The Portuguese army was composed as follows:
|
Com1 |
|
Ally |
|
Com3 |
|
Com4 |
|
|
Irr Bw O |
6 |
BwS |
4 |
Irn Ax O |
8 |
Reg Kn S Gen |
1 |
|
PsO |
3 |
KnI Gen |
1 |
LhO |
2 |
Reg Bw O |
6 |
|
HdO |
2 |
|
5 |
Reg Kn S Gen |
1 |
Res Kn S |
3 |
|
LhO |
4 |
|
11 |
LhO |
4 |
||
|
KnO |
6 |
PsO |
3 |
||||
|
KnS Gen |
1 |
|
15.5 |
||||
|
|
18.5 |
I defended, and threw some fairly inconsequential terrain around – forgetting that I could have the compulsory wood as a 1.5 FE piece. However there were some woods and RGo on either flank which served to narrow the table slightly, which helped. The Portuguese deployed with the two bow armed commands (2 + 4) on my left, with the others towards the right (LH, bows, knights, auxilia) refusing the center with a LH screen and holding back the irregular knights in Command 1. Rather innovatively I deployed a line of elephants, supported auxilia and Bf (F) across the width of the table.
The game started with the 4 Lh in the 4th Portuguese command scooting round my left flank, to expand and line up against a column of ordinary (but brightly colored) auxilia. This was a problem to plague me in future games also, and fortunately I managed to respond in the only way possible – good pip dice and even better combat dice.
Having (after 3-4 turns) neutralized the flank attack, my army drove forwards across the line, forcing the once brave Brother knights to fall back leaving their bowmen somewhat exposed – but their shooting successfully drove back the elephants, saving them for a while. Soon the English general was also staring down the barrel of a long grey trunk and was in full speed reverse mode.
Over on the other flank the auxilia block made a tentative move towards the wood defending my flank – only to be halted by my ambush of 3 auxilia emerging to delay their march. The LH were starting to get over confident – but because of the pips being thrown across to help the bowmen, were also getting rather close to the wall of grey smelliness approaching them. Eventually this dice-allocation dilemma led to the LH being caught as a column tried to retreat from the battlefield, and three were killed, doing great damage to the ability of the main Portuguese command to survive further casualties.
More importantly it also did great damage to the ability of the bow block in command 1 to defend its flanks against my elephants and auxilia, who had borne down on them in a relentless advance straight down the middle of the table throughout the game. Seeing their perilous position, the knights launched an attack on the vanguard of the main Khmer elephant/auxilia formation, only to be roundly beaten back.
The command crumbled, and the ensuing noise and confusion clearly put off the English, who took their eye off the ball and were trampled by an enthusiastic elephant. Game over, 10-0 (3-0) to me!
-
Expert Analysis on this match comes from Australian Expert Jose-Marco Kronberguhuhurrrr-Wattoo
"Well,
G’day, Bonzer, this
is all fine and good, but did I tell you about the time I fought a 
Medieval
Portuguese army which some bloke had compiled incorrectly and he actually had
843 points of troops? Well, I had accidentally left some of my stuff in my
house. I keep it all in 14 rooms in a wing of my house I built myself out of old
fosters tinnies and my own spit over a long weekend a couple of years ago. Fair
Dinkum! The soldiers are held in a shelving system built for me by the
grandson of Stradivarius, out of wood from the Coolibar tree. Strewth!
The Coolibar tree has a fantastic type of wood, you can only get it in
Australia and it is light, easy to work yet is capable of stopping rounds from a
shoulder launched anti-tank gun. The American government offered to pay over a
billion Aussie dollars (that’s about 12 Euros I think?) for some seeds so they
can grow it on the border with Mexico to stop the immigrants getting in. And you
know what - Australian government said no, because they just couldn’t be arsed!
Strewth! Back to the guns - did I ever tell you how
I once used to own 6 antitank guns, 4 Uzi 9mm machine pistols and a 3"
mortar? Double Bonzer With Added Vegemite! The
mortar was the Ants Pants, it really was! I used them for shooting deadly
rattlesnakes – but 
not
in Australia you know – there no deadly snakes in Australia – well, there
are, but they are more scared of you than you are of them. This was when I was
single-handedly walking across New Guinea on a secret
mission for The United Nations when I had been asked to wipe out the
termite population using an electric toothbrush and a used toothpick. Bonzer!
Well, the batteries ran out on the toothbrush…. But that’s a
different story. Now, where was I? Oh yes, my 212 point army against 956 points
of Portuguese – well, suffice to say I just attacked and caught the guy really
on the back foot , and he was all over the place, and his army was going down
badly… but then he got really lucky and put 10 LH into my baggage which was
undefended. Blimey! Well, I hadn’t chosen the
list composition. Then it was all over even though I’d actually killed over
120% of his army by this time . So, really with equal points and my own army
composition I would have been expecting at least 6-8 points out of this game,
not just the 3 you got you Pommie Sheila. Bonzer! I’m
just off to mow the brigalow suckers – her indoors doesn’t like it, but what’s
this, Bush Week or something ......?"
